Space Pictures This Week: "Blast" Crater, Mars Rover, More

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Space Pictures This Week: "Blast" Crater, Mars Rover, More

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System Check

NASA's Curiosity rover snapped this closeup view of its tool turret flexing its seven-foot-long (two-meter-long) robot arm on August 20—the first time since landing on the red planet about two weeks ago.

The car-size robotic geochemist conducted a series of health checks on itself, including unfolding its arm and making sure all five of its joints are in working order.

Like a hand, at the tip of its appendage is a 2-foot-wide (0.6-meter-wide), 70-pound (32-kilogram) turret of five tools that will be used to collect and analyze rock and soil samples on Mars.